Chapter 5 - THE GRADIENT OF THE CURRENT
"The crosswind increased," Lena stated flatly, pointing her arm downrange.
She didn't point at the flag closest to the firing line. She pointed at the mid-range indicator sitting at three hundred yards, then shifted her finger sixty degrees to the right, targeting a clump of dry scrub oak clinging to the base of the western berm.
"Flag One shows an eight-knot vector from the west-southwest," Lena said, her voice dropping into a rhythmic, clinical cadence that sounded entirely alien coming from a maintenance worker. "Flag Two is dead. But the thermal column rising off the draw behind the three-hundred-yard mark is pulling a twelve-knot shear from the north-northwest. It's a cross-draft."
Mercer blinked, momentarily thrown off by her rapid deployment of technical marksmanship jargon. He stepped forward, his chest puffing out beneath his tactical vest.
"Shut your mouth," Mercer barked, pointing an aggressive finger at her nose. "You don't talk about ballistic vectors on my range. I have a Master Sniper qualification from QUANTICO. I know how to read a wind flag. Flag One is blowing west. The wind is west."
Ryan Cole took three heavy steps across the concrete, stopping directly beside Firing Bench Four. He raised his high-powered spotting scope, twisting the ocular lens to focus on the vegetation along the western berm.
Ryan’s face went dead serious.
Through the high-magnification glass, Ryan saw exactly what Lena had just described without optics: the scrub oak branches at three hundred yards were bending violently toward the south, while the heat waves hovering over the four-hundred-yard steel target were dancing in a sharp, vertical shear pattern.
The wind on Range Delta was not a uniform crosswind. It was a complex, multi-directional rotor draft created by the midday heat bouncing off the granite canyon walls.
Ryan turned his head slowly, looking at Lena with a mixture of intense scrutiny and sudden, profound respect.
"She's right, Lieutenant," Ryan said quietly, his voice carrying the calm authority of an operator who had taken shots in actual combat zones. "The mid-range wind is shearing. If we hold for an eight-knot western crosswind, the round is going to drift forty inches right at the target."
Mercer’s face turned from crimson to a dark, dangerous purple. He looked at Ryan, then looked at Lena, feeling the authority on his deck slipping through his fingers like sand.
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"Back to work, Hart!" Mercer roared, stepping directly between Lena and the firing line to block her view downrange. "Now! Pick up that bucket or I'll have security escort you off this installation by twelve hundred hours!"
Lena did not react to the threat. She stayed standing near the edge of the pad, her dark eyes remaining completely focused on the distant steel targets.
